Setup MongoDB as a service with Powershell

27022012

I have written a small Powershell script to setup a MongoDB instance as a single node or in a replicaset configuration. I want to share the script here and hope this is useful for some of you (feedback is welcome). To run the script you need admin rights; otherwise the service can’t be created. The main purpose of the script is to get MongoDB up and running on a Windows PC for local development.

In this post I want to talk about how the script works. In a further post I will provide some information regarding the setup and configuration.

I have separated the script into 3 files. MongoDbSetup.ps1, WebClient.ps1 and Zip.ps1. The MongoDbSetup-file is the main script and responsible for the installation. WebClient and Zip are only small helpers. WebClient.ps1 is used to download a file and display a progress bar (while downloading). The file Zip.ps1 is used to unzip a zip-file to a specified destination folder (used to unpack MongoDB after download).

What the MongoDB setup script do

The following picture shows a simplified process what the script does.

I want to provide you with a bit more details about the script execution. The first thing we do is to setup the folder structure we expect inside the script. We have a download folder where the downloaded binaries from MongoDB are stored (zip-files). Every installed instance has his own folder in this case “MongoDB ReplicaSet”. Inside the “MongoDB ReplicaSet” directory we have 3 folders. “Bin” for storing the unzipped MongoDB binaries, “data” for the database files and “log” for all log messages.

The location and name where the folders get stored can be defined as a parameter while calling the script. Before we start to download the zip-file holding the MongoDB binaries we want to make sure there is no service running with the same name like the service we want to create. Therefore the script shuts down existing services to allow replacing the service thru the script. This can be handy for the reason you want to update an existing instance (for example you want to update the MongoDB version). Then the download of the zip-file with the binaries starts. The download will fetch the Windows 64-bit version of the binaries for the specified MongoDB version (tested with version 2.0.2 and 1.8.5). If the format of the filename on the MongoDB server will change you need to update the script. If you install a second node the download won’t fetch the file from the server as long you have the zip file inside the download folder (which is created thru the installation process).

The next step is to unzip and copy the executables to the bin folder for the new instance. The fact that we have a bin folder for every instance, made it possible to run different MongoDB versions on the different instances.

Now all preparation is done. We can start with the installation of the single node or the replicaset. I will describe the process of the replicaset installation because it’s much more interesting. The single node installation is a sub-part of the replicaset configuration.

For the reason we want to make changes on an existing replicaset with the script, we need to remove the existing instances with the same name. Afterwards we can setup the number of nodes. The amount of nodes is provided thru a parameter when calling the script. After the setup of the nodes another node is installed as arbiter, if you didn’t change the default configuration. Now we have all nodes installed and need to start the services.

The last step is to configure of the replicaset. We create a file which holds the configuration for all nodes. After creating the file we can run mongo.exe and provide the file as parameter to run and initiate the replicaset configuration. The replicaset needs a bit of time till it is up and running. Connect to your newly created instance and check the replicaset status by calling rs.status(). Then you are done.

As I mentioned above there are a couple of parameters you can set by calling the script to override the default values. In the following table you can find a list with these parameters.

Parameter

Default

Usage

version

2.0.2

Specify the version of the MongoDB binaries we want to use for the new instance.

Mode

ReplicaSet

Options are ReplicaSet and SingleMode. Depends on the instance you want to install.

portNumber

30000

Start the port number at the given port. On nodes for a replicaset the port is increased for every node.

numberNodes

2

Number of nodes (without arbiter)

useArbiter

True

Create and use an arbiter

destinationPath

c:\mongodb\

Path where the installation stores the data

serviceName

MongoDB ReplicaSet

Name of the service which is created. When creating a replicaset a number is attached to the name.